2007 World History

2007

Coalition forces battle
insurgents on the streets of Iraq, as secretarian violence intensifies;
see Iraq Timeline 2007 for
details (all year long). Romania and
Bulgaria are admitted to the European Union,
expanding it to 27 nations and a population of about 490 million
(Jan. 1). Some 3,700 people attend a state funeral in Washington,
DC, for Gerald Ford, the
38th president of the United States (Jan. 2).
California Democrat Nancy
Pelosi becomes the first U.S. Speaker of the House of
Representatives (Jan. 4). Responding to claims of
corruption on the electoral commission and threats by an alliance of
political parties to boycott upcoming elections, Bangladeshi president
Iajuddin Ahmed declares a state of emergency, resigns as head of the
interim government, and postpones elections (Jan. 11).
President Bush focuses his sixth State of the Union address on domestic issues,
including reducing oil consumption and increasing access to health
insurance. He admits that the war in Iraq is not going as planned.
“This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we
are in,” he said. “Every one of us wishes that this war were
over and won” (Jan. 23).Sinn Fein endorses a plan to
support the police in Northern Ireland. Over 15 years, the composition
of the force will change to reflect the population of the province. Vote
clears the path to pursue a power-sharing government between Catholic
and Protestant parties (Jan. 28). The Senate confirms
Mike McConnell as the director of National Intelligence (Feb.
6). Harvard University's Board of Overseers votes to name Drew
Gilpin Faust, a historian, as the university’s first female
president in its 371-year history (Feb. 7). Leaders
from Hamas and Fatah, two
Palestinian factions that have been engaged in deadly violence, meet in
Mecca and reach deal to end the fighting and to form a unity government
(Feb. 8). At a meeting in Beijing with diplomats from
the U.S., China, South Korea, Russia, and Japan,
North Korea agrees to dismantle its nuclear
facilities and allow international inspectors to enter the country in
exchange for about $400 million in oil and aid (Feb.
13). International Court of Justice rules that the slaughter of
some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica in 1995 was
genocide, but stops short of saying Serbia was directly responsible (Feb. 26). Gen. George
Weightman is removed from his post as head of the Walter Reed Army
Medical Center after reports that patients have received inadequate
care, have been caught in a maze of bureaucratic red tape, and have been
treated in dilapidated facilities (March 1). Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former
chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is found guilty
of lying to FBI agents and to a grand jury in the investigation of who
leaked to the press the name of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson
(March 6). Khalid Shaikh Mohammed reportedly assumes
responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and
a role in many others, including the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center(March
10). Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admits
that the Justice Department made mistakes and exercised poor judgment in
firing seven federal prosecutors in late 2006 (March
13). Leaders of Hamas and Fatah agree on a coalition
government. The government's platform does not recognize Israel, accept
earlier Israeli-Palestinian accords, or renounce violence, conditions
required by Western countries before they resume aid to the Palestinian
government (March 15). For the first time, the leaders
of Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams, the leader
of Sinn Fein, and Rev. Ian
Paisley, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, meet
face-to-face and hash out an agreement for a power-sharing government
(March 26). Iranian troops detain 15 Britons, eight
sailors and seven marines, claiming they were in Iranian territorial
waters. British officials deny the allegation, saying they were in Iraqi
waters (March 26).U.S.
Supreme Court rules, 5–4, that the Environmental Protection
Agency has the authority to regulate automobile emissions of
heat-trapping gases and that the agency cannot shun its responsibility
to do so unless it provides a scientific reason (April
2). The 15 sailors and marines who were seized in disputed
waters on by Iranian troops are freed (April 4).
Iranian resident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the country has the ability to enrich uranium on an industrial
scale, which is part of the process to make fuel for a nuclear bomb or
reactor (April 9). Some 35 people are killed and
hundreds are wounded when suicide bombers attack a government building
in Algiers, Algeria, and a police station on
the outskirts of the capital. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claims
responsibility for the attack (April 11). A suicide
bomber attacks Iraq's Parliament buidling, which is located in Baghdad's
fortified International Zone. Eight people, including two Iraqi
legislators, die (April 13). Male student kills two in a Virginia
Tech dorm. Two hours later, he kills 30 more in a classroom building
before committing suicide. The shooting rampage is the most deadly in
U.S. history. Fifteen others are wounded (April 16).
U.S. Supreme Court votes, 5–4, to uphold the Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act, a federal law passed in 2003. It is the first time the
Court bans a specific type of abortion procedure (April 18).
Nicolas
Sarkozy, the conservative candidate, prevails over
Ségolène Royal, of the Socialist Party, taking 30.7% of
the vote to Royal’s 25.2% in the first round of French
presidential elections (April 22). Bush vetoes a $124
billion spending bill passed by Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill called on the Bush
administration to establish benchmarks for the Iraqi government that, if
met, set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It was
only the second time in Bush's presidency that he used the veto
(May 1). In the second round of French presidential
elections, Conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy defeats Socialist
candidate Ségolène Royal, 53.1% to 46.9% (May
6). Local government is restored to Northern Ireland as Rev.
Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, and Martin McGuinness,
of Sinn Fein, are sworn in as leader and deputy leader, respectively, of
the Northern Ireland executive government (May 8).Tony Blair says he will resign
as prime minister of the United Kingdom on
June 27 after ten years in the post (May 10). U.S.
Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, the second-highest-ranking
official in the Justice Department, announces he will step down. He
cites financial reasons, but many observers speculate that his
resignation is linked to the scandal over the dismissal of several
federal prosecutors (May 14). Paul Wolfowitz resigns as
president of the World Bank after being found guilty of conflict of
interest for setting up a lucrative pay raise for his girlfriend
(May 17). A grand jury indicts Rep. William Jefferson,
Democrat of Louisiana, on 16 corruption-related counts, including
racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering, and obstruction of justice
(June 4). Leaders of the eight industrialized nations
meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany, agree to consider ways to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (June
7). After months of negotiation and compromise, an overhaul of
the immigration system fails to reach a vote in the Senate as the bill
falls short of the required 60 votes to end debate and put it to a vote.
The failure of the bill is considered a major blow to President Bush,
who has made such legislation a domestic policy priority (June
7). A U.S. federal court rules, 2–1, that President Bush
cannot have the military hold a civilian detainee indefinitely who is
deemed to be an enemy combatant. Instead, the court says, the detainee
must be charged with a crime, used as a material witness, or deported
(June 11). Sudanese officials agree to allow a joint
peacekeeping force of about 19,000 troops from the African Union and the
United Nations be deployed to Darfur, but require that most of the
soldiers be African (June 12). Dozens die as fighting
intensifies between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah. Hamas takes
control of much of the Gaza Strip. With
Fatah holding sway over the West Bank, many
fear a civil war is imminent (June 12-13). Former
Israeli prime minister Ehud
Barak is elected head the Labor Party. In addition, Shimon Peres, of the Kadima
Party, is elected president by Parliament (June 13).
The U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees request that Harriet
Miers, President Bush's former counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former
deputy assistant to the president and White House director of political
affairs, turn over documents relating to the firing of nine U.S.
prosecutors in 2006 and testify about the dismissals. President Bush,
citing executive privilege, says the White House will not comply with
the subpeonas (June 13). Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas dissolves the
government, fires Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas, and
declares a state of emergency. Salam Fayyad, an economist, takes over as
interim prime minister (June 14). President Bush vetoes
a bill that would have eased restrictions on federal funding of
embryonic stem cell research
(June 20). Robert Zoellick takes over as the president
of the World Bank, succeeding Paul Wolfowitz (June 25).Gordon Brown replaces Tony
Blair as the prime minister of Great Britain (June 27).
Bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court rules, 5‒4, that programs in
Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain diversity in
schools by considering race when assigning students to schools, are
unconstitutional (June 28). President Bush commutes the sentence
of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former aid who was
convicted of lying to FBI agents and to a grand jury in the
investigation of who leaked to the press the name of a covert CIA agent
(July 2). Inspectors from the International Atomic
Energy Agency verify that North Korea has
shut down its weapons-making nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, one part of an
agreement reached in February 2007 (July 16). President
Bush gives CIA the authority to resume using a number of harsh
interrogation methods when questioning terrorism suspects. The order,
however, does not allow the use of waterboarding or exposing suspects to
extreme heat or cold (July 20). The minimum wage in the U.S. increases to $5.85, up
from $5.15. It's the first increase in 10 years. The wage will increase
70 cents each year through 2009, when it reaches $7.25 an hour
(July 24). The U.S. and India agree on a deal that allows India, which
has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to buy nuclear fuel
from the U.S. to expand its civilian nuclear energy program and
reprocess its spent fuel. India agrees to open the reprocessing facility
to international inspectors (July 27). Kaing Guek Eav,
alias Duch, the Khmer Rouge leader who
ran the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia in the late 1970s, is indicted for
crimes against humanity (July 31). An eight-lane
interstate bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
that is packed with cars breaks into sections and falls into the river,
killing 13 people (Aug. 1). President Bush signs into
law a bill that legalizes government eavesdropping of telephone
conversations and emails of American citizens and people overseas
without a warrant as long as there is a "reasonable belief" that one
party is not in the United States (Aug. 5).East Timor president José Ramos-Horta
names independence activist Xanana Gusmão as prime minister
(Aug. 6).Karl
Rove, the highly influential and controversial advisor to President
Bush, announces he will leave his position as deputy chief of staff at
the end of Augus 2007 (Aug. 13). A 8.0-magnitude
earthquake occurs 90 miles southeast of Lima, Peru, killing at least 500 people and injuring
hundreds more. The cities of Pisco, Chincha, and Ica are among those
reporting the most damage (Aug. 15). In Thailand's first referendum, voters approve a
new constitution that was drafted by a panel selected by the military
government (Aug. 20). Report, completed in 2005 but not
released until now, outlines several bureaucratic and intelligence
failures that allowed the 9/11 hijackers to enter the United States and concludes that George Tenet,
the former director of the CIA, should be held accountable for not
formulating a plan to dismantle al-Qaeda (Aug. 21). The
White House announces that Alberto Gonzales, the
beleaguered attorney general, has submitted his resignation to President
Bush (Aug. 27). Abdullah Gul, of Turkey's Justice and
Development Party, is elected president by parliament in the third round
of voting. He is the first Islamist president in modern Turkey's history (Aug. 28).North Korea says it will disable its nuclear
fuel production facility and disclose to international monitors an
accounting of all of its nuclear programs by the end of 2007
(Sep. 2). In highly anticipated testimony, Gen. David
Petraeus tells members of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services
committees that the U.S. military needs more time to meet its goals in
Iraq. Petraeus rejects suggestions that the U.S. shift from a
counterinsurgency operation to training Iraqi forces and fighting
terrorists. Instead, he says the U.S. must continue all three missions
(Sep 10). Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif,
who was ousted in a coup in 1999 by Pervez Musharraf, is arrested and
deported after trying to re-enter Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia(Sep. 10).
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe abruptly announces his resignation.
The move follows a string of scandals and July's stunning defeat in
parliamentary elections, in which his Liberal Democratic Party lost
control of the upper house to the opposition Democratic Party
(Sep. 12). Seventeen Iraqi civilians, including a
couple and their infant, are killed when employees of private security
company Blackwater USA, which was escorting a diplomatic convoy, fire on
a car that failed to stop at the request of a police officer
(Sep. 16). Nuon Chea, who was second-in-command to Pol
Pot during the four years of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia, is charged
with war crimes (Sep. 19). Japan's governing Liberal Democratic Party
elects Yasuo Fukuda as prime minister, replacing Shinzo Abe(Sep.
23). The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review decides that
foreign detainees deemed "unlawful enemy combatants" should be tried for
war crimes in military tribunals (Sep. 24). After a
month of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations over sharp price
increases in fuel in Myanmar, government
forces shoot at crowds, raid pagodas, and arrest monks (Sep.
26). North Korea announces it will disclose details about its
nuclear facilities, including how much plutonium it has produced, and
dismantle all of its nuclear faculties by the end of 2007. In exchange,
it will receive some 950,000 metric tons of fuel oil or financial aid
and the Bush administration will start the process of removing North
Korea from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism (Oct.
3). President Bush vetoes a bill that would have increased the
funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to $60
billion from $35 billion to provide health insurance to more than 10
million children (Oct. 3). Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is easily
reelected to a third term by the country's national and provincial
assemblies. The opposition boycotts the vote, however, and only
representatives from the governing party participate in the election. In
addition, the Supreme Court has yet to rule if he was constitutionally
eligible to run for president while still head of the military
(Oct. 6). Former vice president Al Gore and the United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work educating the
world about human-caused climate change and for outlining ways to
reverse global warming (Oct. 12). Benazir Bhutto arrives in Pakistan
after eight years in exile. She survives a suicide attack on her convoy,
but as many as 135 people die (Oct. 18). Argentina's
first lady, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is elected president,
succeeding her husband, Néstor Kirchner. She's the first woman in
Argentina to be elected president (Oct. 28). Pakistan's
prime minister Pervez Musharraf declares a state of emergency, suspends
the country's constitution, and fires Chief Justice Iflikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry and the other judges on the Supreme Court. Analysts suggest
that Musharraf was trying to preempt an upcoming ruling by the Supreme
Court, which is expected to declare he could not constitutionally run
for president while head of military (Nov. 3). More
than 50 people, including 18 children, four teachers, and six members of
Afghanistan's Parliament, die in an attack
in Baghlan (Nov. 7). After days of protests by
opposition parties, Georgia's president
Mikheil Saakashvili imposes a state of emergency. The opposition calls
for early elections and the resignation of Saakashvili, who
demonstrators accuse of abusing power and stifling the opposition
(Nov. 7). Michael Mukasey is confirmed at the U.S.
attorney general, replacing Alberto Gonzales (Nov. 8).
Federal appeals court in San Francisco rules that the Bush
administration's fuel economy standards for light trucks are not
stringent enough and fail to consider how tailpipe emissions affect
climate change (Nov. 15). Cyclone Sidr, with winds over
100 miles per hour, kills nearly 3,500 people in southern Bangladesh. The United Nations reports that a
million people are left homeless (Nov. 15). Kaing Guek
Eav, alias Duch, who ran Cambodia's notorious Tuol Sleng prison and is the first Khmer Rouge defendant to
appear in court, seeks bail on charges of crimes against humanity
(Nov. 20). Two teams of scientists, one in Wisconsin
the other in Japan, announce they have discovered a way to make
embryonic stem cells without using embryonic stem cells(Nov. 20).
A brigade of 5,000 U.S. troops starts to leave Iraq's Diyala
Province, the first significant pullback of U.S. troops (Nov.
24). Australian prime minister John Howard, the leader of the
Liberal Party, loses to the Labor Party's Kevin Rudd (Nov.
24). Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf steps down as military chief.
He is replaced by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former head of
Pakistan’s intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.
(Nov. 28). A National Intelligence Estimate compiled by
the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community says "with high
confidence" that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The
report contradicts one written in 2005 that stated Iran was determined to continue developing such
weapons (Dec. 3). The New York Times reports
that in 2005 the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two
al-Qaeda suspects. The tapes reportedly included agency operative using
harsh interrogation techniques (Dec. 6). President Bush
signs into law an energy package that requires passenger vehicles sold
in the U.S. to have fuel economy standards of 35 mpg by 2020 and an
increase in the production of ethanol and other biofuels to 36 billion
gallons a year by 2022 (Dec. 6). Report on steroid use in professional baseball,
the result of a thorough, far-reaching investigation led by former U.S.
senator George Mitchell, accuses
89 current and former Major League Baseball players of using illegal
performance-enhancing drugs (Dec. 13). Pakistani
president Pervez Musharraf ends emergency rule and restores the
Constitution, but he also issues several executive orders and
constitutional amendments that preclude any legal challenges related to
his actions during and after emergency rule was established
(Dec. 14). With the help of the U.S. military, Turkish
fighter jets bomb areas in Dohuk Province in northern Iraq, targeting
the Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (Dec.
16). Lee Myung-bak, of South
Korea's opposition Grand National Party, wins 48.7% of the vote in
presidential elections (Dec. 19). Former Pakistani
prime minister Benazir Bhutto is
killed in a suicide at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi. President Pervez
Musharraf blames al Qaeda for the attack, which kills 23 other people.
Bhutto's supporters, however, accuse Musharraf's government of
orchestrating the bombing (Dec. 27). In the preliminary
results of Kenya's presidential election,
opposition candidate Raila Odinga, of the Orange Democratic Movement,
leads incumbent Mwai Kibaki, 57% to 39% (Dec. 27).
Odinga's lead diminishes, and Kenya's election commission declares
Kibaki the winner, 46% to 44%. Violence breaks out among members of the
Luo and Kikuyu tribes. Odinga is Luo, and Kibaki is Kikuyu.
International observers say the vote was rigged (Dec. 30).